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How Mark Twain Used Today’s Evocative Word –“TANGLED“– to get ’em evocating!

SOURCE: Mark Twain: The American Claimant (1892)

“He was prodigiously pleased by her outspoken heartiness, and wanted to repay her by assuring her that he remembered her, and not only that but better even than he remembered his own children, but the facts would not quite warrant this; still, he stumbled through a TANGLED sentence which answered just as well, since the purport of it was an awkward and unintentional confession that her extraordinary beauty had so stupefied him that … ” READ more at bottom of this blog.

“When I say I’ll learn (‘Teach’ is not in the river vocabulary) a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.”Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain

Mark Twain, long recognized as a wonderful author and humorist was possibly THE most successful professional speaker ever. He enthralled audiences from Berlin to Boston, from Montana to Melbourne with storytelling full of humor, pathos and humanity. He was regarded by many as an exceptional impromptu speaker, except he wasn’t! Twain worked diligently at his craft, researching, writing, rewriting and memorizing his material.

In this book, I showcase the words of Twain and his contemporaries via a unique MARK TWAIN acronym to highlight what Mark Twain Learned Me ’bout Public Speaking. The nine lessons provide a memorable and implementable framework for great speech making and presentation.

The MARK TWAIN acronym spells:

Message preparation

Audience

Relate to audience

Know your objective

Titter and humor

Wait (the Pause)

Anecdote

Involve

Narration and Stagecraft

Excerpt from:

The American Claimant – Chapter V

Mark Twain (1892)

He was prodigiously pleased by her outspoken heartiness, and wanted to repay her by assuring her that he remembered her, and not only that but better even than he remembered his own children, but the facts would not quite warrant this; still, he stumbled through a tangled sentence which answered just as well, since the purport of it was an awkward and unintentional confession that her extraordinary beauty had so stupefied him that he hadn’t got back to his bearings, yet, and therefore couldn’t be certain as to whether he remembered her at all or not.

The speech made him her friend; it couldn’t well help it.

In truth the beauty of this fair creature was of a rare type, and may well excuse a moment of our time spent in its consideration. It did not consist in the fact that she had eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hair, ears, it consisted in their arrangement. In true beauty, more depends upon right location and judicious distribution of feature than upon multiplicity of them. So also as regards color. The very combination of colors which in a volcanic eruption would add beauty to a landscape might detach it from a girl. Such was Gwendolen Sellers.

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Goals and Vision but with a Twist! From Humorous Motivational Business Speaker Conor Cunneen

As a humorous motivational business speaker and Master of Ceremonies / Emcee, Conor Cunneen’s Brand Promise is E4: Energize, Educate, Entertain and Easy to work with. To see how he can keep that Brand Promise for you,